In person icon Civil Society and Narratives of EU Contestation and Engagement

Abstract

This panel will use qualitative research tools to identify narratives of contestation of the EU and relate their emergence to the activism of civil society organisations. These narratives are discourses, ideas, claims or demands contesting the legitimacy of the EU or its policies arising from civil society and influencing public debate. The main objective will be to analyse how these narratives frame the conditions for a legitimate public intervention in a policy sector and attribute these among the national and European level. Expectations are that discourses about the need of homogenisation and coordination of European policies will be underpinned by discussions of the need of representation and participation by citizens and their representatives rather than opposed by principle to the existence of policies beyond the state. This panel will also explore how these narratives are turned into claims and demands towards policy-makers by combining qualitative and quantitative analysis methods to identify whether and how narratives are turned into concrete claims, to whom they are addressed and whether they are expressed by civil society organisations.

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